Don't stress out

Michigan State beat Notre Dame in overtime Saturday in a thrilling college football encounter. After the game, Spartans' head coach Mike Dantonio suffered a mild heart attack.
College football coach is a stressful job. It requires long hours and probably more responsibility than one man should be required to shoulder. It also pays a whole bunch of money.
After Dantonio's heart attack, the media has gone into panic mode, saying perhaps the NCAA should limit the number of hours coaches can devote to their professions.
First of all, what happened to Dantonio was alarming and sad. But, he wasn't the only person who had a heart attack Saturday night.
Heart attacks happen to people in all forms of work. Unfortunately, they're a part of life and a very real part of death.
All of a sudden, people are supposed to be concerned that football coaches' lives are in danger because of the stressful nature of their job. Is a coach's job more stressful than a doctor, who literally has the blood of his patients on his hands? Every day a doctor makes life or death decisions.
Is a coach's job more stressful than that of a police officer? Cops pull cars over all the time. Mostly, they have no idea who is going to roll the window down when they tap on the glass. It could be a little, old lady or an angry man with a gun. These days, it could be a little, old lady with a gun.
That's stress.
I don't know what it's like to be a college football coach - to have the media nipping at your heels, to have clueless fans criticize your every decision, to have your job performance graded by thousands of fans who've never been to a practice much less ran one.
That's a stress I don't understand.
I do know what it's like to have the everyday stress of having to pay $500 worth of bills with about $300.
Coaches worry about what play to call on third-and-four. Other people have to decide between paying their electric bill or their gas bill. You want to talk stress? Try making a five dollar bill last for a week.
I think it's sad what happened to Dantonio. But, please, don't make it like millionaire coaches have it worse than truck drivers, farmers or construction workers.
Stress isn't a coaching thing. It's a life thing.

A day of redemption

I'm proudly waving my Oakland Raiders banner today. My team got its first win of the season, holding off St. Louis 16-14 in The Black Hole.
No, it's a bit premature to start screaming "the Silver and Black is back!"
But, it does feel good to at least be competitive.
Oakland's defense was stout. Yeah, the Rams' offense is horrific but Steven Jackson is a big, strong, fast back and the Raiders shut him down in the second half.
Offensively, I never lost faith in Darren McFadden. Thanks to an injury to Michael Bush, Coach Tom Cable had no choice but to give the ball to the former Razorback All-American. Even behind that porous offensive line, McFadden brushed aside the "bust" talk, pounding his way for 145 yards on 30 carries.
That's right - 30 carries.
He was the workhorse of the offense. Give some credit to Bruce Gradkowski for sparking the team at quarterback. But, the man who carried the load was McFadden.
Hopefully, he showed the powers that be in Oakland that he should be the team's focal point on offense. Give him the ball again and again and eventually, he'll get into a rhythm and he'll produce for you.
McFadden didn't break off a lot of big runs but he ran hard - real hard. He was delivering hits instead of absorbing them. He looked like an NFL back. He looked like a stud.
Another player who made the most of a rare opportunity was Michael Vick in Philadelphia. He took advantage of an injury to make his first start in a long time. Vick passed for 284 yards and two touchdowns and led the Eagles to their first win of the season.
It was a great day for two players who have seen their stock plummet. It was a great day for two players who have been given up on.
It was also a great day for me. I believed in both of these guys so much, I started them on my Fantasy Team. That's right, I benched Tom Brady and started Vick. I benched Joseph Addai and inserted McFadden.
Who's crazy now, suckers?

Americans suck at tennis, too

I was scanning the Associated Press wire Tuesday night and came across an article that made my blood boil. After the United States' dismal showing in this year's U.S. Open tennis event, the USTA announced a rules change, calling for downsized courts, smaller rackets and less lively tennis balls for players 10 and under.
The rule is designed to make tennis easier for young players. Instead of the regulation-sized 78-foot court, the youth courts will range from 36 to 60 feet, some with lower nets.
"You're asking a 9-year-old to play on the same-size court as Roger Federer does," said Kurt Kamperman, the USTA's chief executive of community tennis. "It's not always realistic."
You know what else is not realistic?
You can't create better tennis players by lowering the net.
If you make the game easy for youngsters, what happens when they start playing on the bigger court with the higher net and the bouncier balls?
I don't know, maybe I'm just too old. I remember when sports were challenging. Hell, I remember when being a kid was challenging. That was part of the fun. These days, children are coddled to the point where they don't know how to work for anything.
Everything already comes so easily. Kids can Google this or download that. Bored? Crank up the Xbox and play state-of-the-art video games.
You know how I entertained myself? With a stick and some rocks. That's right. It takes some imagination to kill off an entire summer day with just a stick and rocks.
Kids today don't have to do that. You say it's progress but I don't necessarily agree. I mean, heck, look at me. All I had to play with was the friend I completely made up in my head and look how great I turned out.
Okay, maybe I'm not a great example. But, it worked for other people my age.
Everything is so much softer for kids today. I heard they banned dodge ball at school because the kids who lost developed low self esteem.
Uh, huh.
Back at Hermitage, not only did we play dodge ball, we played a game called tackle tag. You didn't get to be "it" by getting tagged. You were "it" after you got body slammed on the ground.
Yeah, that's right, low self esteem my sweet patootie. If you made it through recess, you felt pretty darned good about yourself.
I don't have kids and I guess it's a good thing. I mean, we live in a "No child left behind" society where paddlings at school are illegal. It's darn near illegal to spank your kids at home.
Children's rights?
Exactly what year did children receive rights?
When I was a kid, I had the right to remain silent. That, and my mom's right hand were the only rights I ever knew I had.
And, just look how I turned out.
Okay, I'm not a good example.
But, back to the lecture at hand. The reason the USTA is doing this is to keep more kids involved in tennis so a growing pipeline will start feeding the elite levels. Basically, the USTA is upset that Europeans have caught up and passed Americans at tennis.
I'm not sure making the sport easier for our youth is the remedy. I think Europeans and people from other countries are simply hungrier than Americans, right now. Those other players know to get ahead, they have to work, work and keep working. Nothing is given to them.
I'm not sure what the answer is for us, but I just don't think continuing to spoon feed our kids is getting it done. I mean, Chris Evert and Jimmy Connors didn't play on a smaller court with a smaller racket and lower net. They became great players because they wanted it and they worked and got it.
If we want to develop better tennis players, perhaps we should raise the bar instead of lowering it. Another thing we could do is, at the high school level, stop treating tennis and golf like the red-headed step children of football. You want to encourage kids to play tennis, treat them like you treat the football players.
Ha! Who am I kidding?
I guess maybe it's just too late. Everything comes so easily for American youth. Pretty soon the only sport we'll dominate will be football. And by football I mean the Madden video game.

Give the WNBA another chance

I believe it was Charles Barkley who was interviewed last season during the WNBA Playoffs. Sir Charles told the interviewer that fans should give the WNBA another chance. The play has gotten a whole lot better since the league tipped off.
I don't often agree with Barkley but in this instance, he's absolutely correct.
The WNBA Playoffs are going on, right now, although most of you don't even realize it. Unfortunately, a lot of you do know they're going on and simply don't care.
That's the problem for the league, which is still hanging on by a thread after 10-plus seasons of existence.
A lot of fans will never give the WNBA a fair chance. These are the fans who say they want to see dunking and when a woman like Brittany Griner starts throwing it down with two hands, they claim she doesn't look feminine enough.
Some men simply will not look at a woman if she's not wearing a short skirt and batting her fake eyelashes like Marilyn Monroe. The WNBA will never appeal to these guys.
But, the league should appeal to real basketball fans. If you really like the sport and love to watch good, competitive basketball, these WNBA Playoffs have been great. The games have been close, hotly contested, intense matchups between relatively even-matched teams. There's been plenty of offense, tough-hard nosed defense down the stretch and even a buzzer-beater or two.
I would almost guarantee that any true basketball fan who watched one of these last few games will tune in again. Unfortunately, like Charles Barkley so eloquently stated, a lot of fans won't give the league another chance.
It really is too bad. They're missing some really good basketball.

Female athletes should put up or shut up

As a sports writer who has gone out of his way to promote the growth of girls in sports over the past 20 years, I was bothered by John McEnroe's comments last week. The tennis legend suggested female players on the WTA shouldn't be asked to compete in as many tournaments as the men. He suggested women aren't as tough or as physically capable of playing so much.
"You shouldn't push them to play more than they're capable of," said McEnroe, who suggested the number of women's tournaments be cut.
If he were being honest, McEnroe would love to say all women's tennis should be banned. McEnroe has displayed a disdain for women's tennis for a long time. When he does commentary for a women's match, you can hear the disgust in his voice and see the disrespect in his face.
So, while his comments bothered me, I wasn't surprised.
Of course, women's groups were outraged at the suggestion that female athletes aren't capable of competing at the same level as their male counterparts.
I agree with those women. But, instead of telling McEnroe and all those like him that they're wrong, I think it's time women put up or shut up.
In men's tennis, the players go best 3-of-5 sets while the women play best-of-3. Why?
Aren't women just as capable as the men?
Why do women golfers hit off different tees? Why does women's basketball use a smaller ball?
I know. Women are built differently than men. Women are usually smaller than men with smaller hands and yadda, yadda, yadda.
If you want men to stop ridiculing female athletes, you have to erase all the rules that give allowances for women.
All sports should be like track and field. The men's 100 meters is the same distance as the women's 100 meters. The men's marathon is the same distance as the women's marathon. Women jump over the same high jump bar and into the same long jump pit as the men.
Same rules. Same sport. Same respect.
Okay, yeah, I'll give you women clearing low hurdles while men run the high hurdles. Women are shorter with shorter legs.
But, why do women need to hit from a different tee in golf? There should be one tee box. Everybody hits from it. If it takes a woman a few more strokes to get the ball in the hole, so what?
Women were playing with a normal-sized basketball for years. Finally someone, probably a man, decided the female hands were too small to hold a big, basketball so they made it smaller. Now, anytime a woman hits a 3-pointer or shoots a high percentage at the free throw line, some neanderthal jerk will suggest, "Hey, I could too if I got to play with a girls' ball."
And, if women can run marathons, why can't they play five sets of tennis? Women are even allowed to have coaching on the court while the men aren't.
What are they, weak?
I don't think they are so it's time we stop treating female athletes as if they're weaklings, incapable of competing at a high level. Stop making allowances for the fact they're women. And, stop giving jerks like McEnroe ammunition to suggest women can't be athletes.